More Salads

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Salads. ya gotta love 'em. Greens mixed with whatever... Just lots of fresh produce put on a plate. As Tony the Tiger said... "They're Grrrrrreat!"

I put a small piece of London broil on the grill and proceeded to overcook it a bit. We were out front gossiping with our new neighbors - much more fun than standing over the grill!

But the salad was great, nonetheless. The plates were a Goodwill find many years ago right after we bought our home in San Leandro, CA. Victor went away for three days on a business trip, and when he came back, I had put a table in the back yard, painted each of the four chairs the same colors as the plates... Matching tablecloth. It was so festive and gay... What was I thinking?!?

But the plates are fun - and they do remind me of summers past. And I think I paid 25 cents a piece for them.

What a deal!


Porterhouse Steaks and Stuffed Peppers

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Having a huge steak is quite a rarity in our house. We're both carnivors and definitely eat our share of beef, but big ol' slabs of beef do not often make it to the table. It's expensive to get the good cuts for one, and... well, I usually like to know where my food comes from. I'm funny that way...

So... off on my weekly shopping trek, I came across a couple of porterhouse steaks that looked fantastic, and priced just right. (Okay, they weren't that cheap, but I didn't have to take out a second mortgage to buy them...) Grass fed, no hormones... They fit the criteria.

No idea yet what to do, but it was definitely going to involve open flame. These guys were screaming for the grill!

It didn't matter that by the time I got home the weather had turned from 84 degrees and sunny to cloudy, windy, and thunderstorms. The grill is in a covered area - I can (and do!) grill in a snowstorm. So... I lit the fire and got ready!

A good steak needs a minimum of enhancement, so all I did was add a bit of salt, pepper and a rub of fresh garlic - just a tad. I let them sit for a moment while figuring out what to serve with them...

A couple of red potatoes and some shallots, a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper were all it took. We have some great fresh herbs growing in the garden, but I think I mentioned thunderstorms. It was pouring rain - Biblical Rain. I wasn't going to get totally soaked for a few sprigs of rosemary. Simplicity.

Onto the grill they went.

Another thing we had were several long Italian peppers. I've been on an Italian pepper kick for a while - I love 'em. So... I cut off the top, cut out the membrane and seeds, and keeping bthem whole, stufffed them with Roquefort cheese. These, too, went on the grill, keeping the top slightly raised to keep the bubbling cheese from spilling out.

Dinner took about 20 minutes from start to finish. And even less time to eat. I sliced the pepper on top of the steak so the cheese would pool on the rare meat. It was heaven!

Needless to say, neither of us finished those huge steaks. Cybil got a nice after dinner treat.


Spring Means Salads

Okay. I've had it with this weather. The latest "storm of the century" is slated to hit in a few hours with rain, freezing weather - and maybe even some snow. Hasn't Mother Nature noticed that the calendar reads April 24th?!? Sheesh! Enough, already!

On an intellectual level, I know I can't fight Mother Nature. I can do nothing to stem the wind, the rain, or the temperature. But that doesn't mean I still can't fight back.

And I'm fighting back with SALADS! Mid-April means fresh produce in my house, and fresh produce, it is. Dinner Salads are now the rule - regardless of what the weather outside may be.

Tonight we had a great salad of mixed greens (lots of arugula!!) and a dressing of strawberries, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper. Simplicity.

The salad itself consisted of the aforementioned greens, roasted red peppers, broccoli, mushrooms, kalamata olives, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, cucumber, and a few ounces of perfectly cooked london broil that Victor marinated.

I love the balance of sweet fresh fruit and savory vegetables and meats. It's easy to prepare and every bite becomes a new taste sensation. The salads are colorful and as yummy as they are eye-appealing.

So do your damnedest, Mother Nature. You're not going to win!


Chinese Take-Out at Home

I picked up a piece of skirt steak at the store the other day. Besides being ridiculously inexpensive - comparatively speaking - it's one of my favorite cuts of meat to marinate and grill. I didn't have a clear idea of what I was going to do with it - so what else is new - but it was only a couple of bucks. I knew I could figure out something...

Skirt steak is not the most popular of meat cuts. It's the diaphragm muscle, and has a reputation for being fatty and tough - and improperly cooked, it definitely is. But it's one of the best pieces of meat to marinate, and it's the only meat to use for fajitas! It picks up flavors extremely well, and as long as it is cut against the grain - as with flank steak - it can be as tender as tender can be.

So this afternoon I pulled it out of the 'fridge and did a marinade of soy sauce, rice wine, chili paste, garlic, sesame oil, and a bit of pepper. I held off on the salt because of the soy sauce... Asian BBQ, here we come!

My first thought was just to do some rice and veggies, but as I thought about it, I thought Chow Mein would be perfect. Naturally, I didn't have any Asian noodles, hoisin sauce, or any of what one would term traditional ingredients, but not having a few ingredients has never stopped me before!

I had spaghetti, I had broth, I had rice wine, I had plenty of vegetables. Tim's Chow Mein, it is!

I cooked up about 1/3 pound of noodles, rinsed, drained, and drizzled a bit of peanut oil on top. I then fried it up in the wok, getting it barely crispy. Off to a plate to keep warm.

I chopped up an onion, bell pepper, carrots, broccoli, brocolli rabe, mushrooms, and garlic and tossed it all into the wok. In the meantime, i made a sauce of about 1/2 cup of beef broth, 1/4 cup rice wine, 1 tbsp chili paste, 1 tsp sesame oil, and about 3 tbsp cornstarch mixed with water.

When the veggies were almost done, I added the sauce, and as it started to thicken, I added the noodles, and mixed everything together.

I put the steaks on the grill, and just as the noodles were ready, the steaks came off. The chow mein went onto the platter, the steak was sliced and set on top, and voila! It was dinner.

Naturally, I made enough for the neighborhood, but leftover Chinese food is mmm-mmm-good - even if there's no carry-out carton to eat from, standing by the 'fridge!


Beef Roulade

I had a nice london broil in the freezer, and no desire to brave the elements by firing up the grill. But that yearn for beef was there nonetheless.

So I decided to try something new - a stuffed london broil. I've made roulades with flank steak, I've made brisiole, and stuffed any number of steaks and chops... And I had plenty of stuff on hand. What the heck. Time to have some fun.

I minced one onion with a few cloves of garlic and about 12 ounces of baby bella mushrooms, sauteed them all with some salt and pepper until almost dry, and then let it cool.

I sliced the beef almost in half, lengthwise, and opened it like a book. I took out my trusty mallet, pounded it a bit to even it all out, and added a liberal dousing of salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

The next step was to cover it all with fresh arugula. I love the peppery flavor of arugula - cooked as a side dish, fresh in a salad... It doesn't matter how it's served, it's good!

Then came the mushrooms... I spread them all over the arugula, rolled it all up and tied it with butcher twine.

I seasoned the top with some fresh black pepper and a sprinkling of San Francisco Bay Sea Salt (just one of about a dozen different salts I have on the shelf right now...) Into the oven for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees and it was done to perfection!

In the meantime, I steamed a bit of broccolini, made some mashed potatoes, and a quick mushroom gravy with the pan drippings.

Dinner was start-to-finish in aout an hour.

There was a goodly amount of leftovers... I see a couple of sandwiches in my future.....


Chicken Fried Steak

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I can't really recall the first time I had Chicken Fried Steak... Probably either at my grandmother's or at Auntie Sis' as a little kid. My mom made it once every blue moon or so (with six kids, even cheap steak was a rarity at our house!) and I definitely had it while in the Navy. (LOTS of Southern boys in the navy, ya know?!?) I remember vats of country gravy and sheet pans stacked high with greasy steak.

But the Chicken Fried Steak I will always remember was served at Lyon's restaurant in Daly City, CA. It was pretty good, for a chain restaurant, but what makes it memorable was Lyon's is where we always went to dinner with my parents. In her later years, my mom pretty much stopped cooking. She attributed it to the numerous hundreds of thousands of meals she had prepared over her life. Besides, Lyon's was close by, reasonably priced, they could get anything they wanted, menu or not, and they knew all the staff. It was like their own private club. And they loved showing off their favorite kids. (That would be me and Victor, of course!)

The vinyl booths, the long counters and the 70's decor only enhanced the dining experience. And the waitresses - either 50 year veteran's who cold work a dozen tables without breaking a sweat - or, later, 20 year old Filipina's who were extremely friendly, if somewhat absentminded - were the icing on the cake.

I guess this would be a good point to explain to some of you just what Chicken Fried Steak is... It seems that since moving east, up here above the Mason-Dixon Line, there's nary a soul who knows what it is! Quite simply, it's a piece of steak - beef steak - that is fried as one would fry chicken. In the olden days, one would take a cheap cut of beef, flour it, and pound it with a Coke bottle to tenderize it and incorporate the flour. Then fry in fat and smother in cream gravy.

I generally use cubed steaks... It is dredged in flour (and I then dip in egg and then dredge in flour, again) and then fried in fat. Oh yum. Of course, it's not complete without Counntry Gravy - cream gravy, sausage gravy... and mashed potatoes. Cardiac heaven on a plate. The best gravy is made from the fat drippings in the pan, of course. Otherwise, why bother?!? And a whole bunch of mashed potatoes!

There's as many variations on a theme as there are folks who cook it. It's the type of recipe that is usually made the same way Mom made it... And it is distinctly Southern (and Western) in nature... Where did it originate?!? Plenty of people claim the honor, but it's been around a long, long time.....

And I'll be making it for a long time, too.....


Let the Salads Begin!

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It's that time of year... My body has been screaming for salads for a few weeks, now. The weather starts turning warm, and I start craving fresh produce. LOTS of fresh produce. It's in my genetic code.

When the weather cools (or gets downright freezing!) soups, stews, and casseroles are what I want. Hearty 'stick-to-the-rib' sort of stuff, but when there's sunshine outside?!? Salad. Big, full-of-flavor-and-texture salad.

I made my weekly trek to the produce market yesterday and found lots of fun food. Little min-eggplants that had my name on them. Broccoli rabe, red and green peppers at an incredible (compared to the grocery store) price, asparagus, mushrooms, avocados, tomatoes, several lettuces, lemongrass, basil, raspberries, blackberries, plums.....

When creating a dinner salad, my only rule is that there are no rules! I really do like to mix flavors and textures, sweet with savory. I love the contrast with a sweet, juicy berry and a tangy vinegar. Or the softness of an avocado with the crunch of a carrot. And grilled veggies?!? I'm in gastronomic heaven!

We received a grill basket a few years ago from friends as a Christmas gift, and I've been putting it to use ever since. I chop up any melange of vegetables, coat with a bit of olive oil and 'whatever' - depends on what flavor theme I'm heading for - and onto the barbie...

Since we're also carnivores, flank steak, London broil, chicken breasts, pork tenderloins - all of them are fair game for the grill - and the salad. Sometimes they go on the grill with little more than salt and pepper. More often, it's a marinade of some sort that sets the theme of the salad.

Last night was a London broil with balsamic, olive oil, garlic, and herbs. I repeated the same basic marinade with the veggies. Onto the grill they went.

The final salad consisted of spring mix lettuce, green peppers, avocado, tomato, cute little grilled eggplant, broccoli, asparagus, raspberries and blackberries - and the london broil. The dressing was something Victor whipped up (he is king of salad dressings!) It was balsamic and olive oil based. We never -ever- buy premade salad dressings. I don't care how "natural" the ingredients are on the label. They're just too easy to make. Plus, it leaves room in the 'fridge for all those other fun things we like!

With that lemongrass in the 'fridge and some fresh Murray's chicken, I think I'm going to go "Thai" tonight.....


Baby it's coooold outside!

Okay. Someone tell Mother Nature that the calendar says April, not January! The sight of white stuff falling from the sky this morning made me rethink BBQ. Mere days ago it was salad weather. Today?!? Something more substantial. I'll grill outside in just about any weather, but today made me think I wanted something that would warm up the house, as well as my tummy!

There was beef stew meat in the freezer, so out it came. Stew is a great cold-weather friend!

I've mentioned before that I sometimes have a wee bit of a problem cooking for a mere two people, so today I actually made a concerted effort to keep the volume under control. I staretd out with about a half pound of stew meat and a small pot.

I browned the beef with half an onion, some garlic, and a handful of sliced mushrooms. I then added about a half-cup of red wine, a qt of beef broth, and some tomato powder. I left it to simmer, uncovered..... About an hour later, I had a rich, rich broth, tender meat, and succulent smells wafting through the house! It had cooked down considerably, and the flavors were really concentrated. Yum.

I added one potato, unpeeled and cut, 3 carrots, also unpeeled and cut, and 2 ribs of celery. I needed more broth. There wasn't going to be enough gravy! Another 2 cups of broth into the pot..... My little stew was growing. How, I don't know. I really did try to make "one" meal. I really did!

Shaking my head, I left it to simmer while I made the biscuit topping.....

2 cups of  baking mix, 1 egg, 2 tbsp butter, dill, garlic, and milk. Mixed well.

I thickened the stew with a butter-flour roux and poured it into a casserole. A large casserole. A casserole for a family with teenagers. I scooped the biscuit topping on, and into a 425° oven for about 30 minutes.

The biscuit topping was light as a feather (adding the egg really helps!) and everything else just plain old yummy! We both ate hearty helpings - and resisted going back for seconds!

And... we have a hot lunch for tomorrow!


London Broil is Falling Down...

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Ooops.. Wrong song. It's still freezing outside, but I'm in the mood for cookin' on the grill! Usually, when I grill, I like to do everything on the grill. Tonight, though, I decided I needed to dirty pots and pans, as well! Besides, it's too damn cold outside to stand there and properly watch things!

Inspiration for tonights dinner came from the leftover gorgonzola butter that was in the 'fridge. It was screaming "Twice Baked Potatoes" and being a person who always listens to my food, I readily complied. I even started out by actually baking the potatoes in the oven! Didn't microwave them to get 'em started. What a difference it makes. I highly recommend it!

I cut a small oval off the top of the potato, peeled off the skin, and scooped out the meaty filling. I added the gorgonzola butter, some sour cream, a bit of S&P, mashed it all together, and spooned it back into the shell. Then back into the oven for about 20 minutes.

I had some mushrooms in the 'fridge, and a couple of green onions, so I sauteed the mushrooms in a bit of olive oil, added the chopped green onions, a splash of red wine, then some beef broth, and cooked it down a bit, thickened with a bit of cornstarch, and a lovely sauce was made.

Meanwhile, I took the London Broil and merely salt-and-peppered it. Nothing else. Put it on the grill. Cooked it rare.

Sauteed some french green beans in a bit of olive oil, S&P. Sliced some of the Portuguese bread from a few days ago, and called it dinner!

Dirtied 1 pot for the sauce, 1 oval baking pan for the potaoes, and 1 saute pan for the beans. Not a bad nights work!


Sometimes I Just Wanna Steak

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Okay. It's 37 degrees outside (feels like 28, according to the weather service...) Perfect grilling weather, don't you think?!? Well - I did. And I did!

I had a couple of bone-in New York strip steaks that were just the ticket, tonight. Served with grilled potato, grilled sweet potato, and grilled asparagus, and a gorgonzola butter, I made a complete meal without dirtying a single pot or pan!

The steaks were done rare, with just a bit of S&P and a light dusting of garlic powder. The potatoes and asparagus were rubbed with a bit of olive oil, then S&P.

Gorgonzola butter is merely mixing butter and gorgonzola cheese. It melts on top of the steak, pools on the plate, and makes a great dipping sauce for the rest of the meal!

Quick, easy, and clean-up's a snap!


Stuffed Flank Steak

I've said for years that some of the best cooking is just using the ingredients you have on hand. Unless you're really trying to replicate a specific dish or looking for an exact flavor, make do with what you have! Just put things together that you like. My Mom was queen of opening the cabinets and creating dinner - and trusting her instincts when it came to cooking. After all, the very worst thing that could happen would be that it's terrible and you throw it out and call for Pizza.

That being said, I had a flank steak that's been in the freezer for a while, and I wanted to use it up before it became a freezer burn-unit victim. I do try and clear out the freezer once in a while. I have a habit of buying what looks good at the time without a clear picture of what I want to do. It's great to have a stocked freezer (and pantry!) but ya have to use the stuff!

I have been negligent in getting gas for the grill, and I seem to be in a rut when it comes to flank steak. I almost always end up with a variation of my Oriental Flank Steak. I like it a lot, but, at some point, one has to move on... No gas for grilling. I needed an idea. Back to the fridge.

In the fridge was a pound of bacon, a head of escarole, lots of mushrooms. Stuffed Flank Steak, of course! My stuffing was right in front of me! I chopped 3 slices of the bacon and cooked about half way. Added about 8oz of sliced mushrooms and cooked about half way. Added the escarole, S&P and a shot of garlic powder and cooked until the escarole was really wilted.

While it was cooking away, I butterflied the flank steak. It was still partially frozen, which made for very easy cutting.

I then spread the filling on the steak, rolled up, and tied with kitchen twine. Browned it in the pan and into a 350 oven for about 40 minutes. Meanwhile, I quartered some baby yukon gold potatoes, drizzled them with olive oil, s&p, and garlic powder, and in the oven they went, too.

Frozen roasted corn from the freezer, and dinner was ready in no time! Start to finish, one hour. And most of the time I was in the office doing other stuff!

Now, I usually make a bread-type of stuffing when I do something like this, but I used the only good bread for the bread pudding last night. I had the other stuff on hand, and I was NOT about to head back to the store - OR - chop up the baguette I brought home from work today. Grocery shopping day is tomorrow, so I can get my Senior Discount! (Don't ask...) ;-)

And there's leftover bread pudding calling my name right now.....